Ascent Trip Report

Well, this day started off pretty crappy as far as cloud cover and weather, but Dan, Pete, John, and I figured, we are here, so we need to do Bunker. We all camped at the USFS Kingston Campground on Sunday night after we all climbed Mt Grant, NV on Sunday. We piled in to Dan's Jeep for the ride to the trailhead on Monday morning and we were off!

We passed right by the jeep trail for Basin Cyn without seeing a single sign of it. We ended up about 3/4 of a mile up Sawmill Cyn before the trail narrowed and the Jeep had to stop. We then made our way about 1/2 a mile up the canyon and then cut right (south) up towards the saddle just SE of Point 9,133. Once on the ridge from Pt 9,133, we headed due SE towards the south end of the saddle separating Bunker Hill from Edith Hill (11,038), Bub Sumner's bonus peak in his NV CoHP book. We then cut up some on-again, off-again use trails to the false summit of Bunker. The real summit is about 1/3 to 1/2 mile south of the first summit with some antenna thingy on it. You pass some building with more junk on it and make your way south about a hundred yards to a cairn with the register at the end of a very nice ridge. It was really windy, so John was huddled behind a building after doing the summit. I signed my name in and headed back to John's shelter. We chatted with Peter there and pointed out the summit. Just below there we met Dan and told him of our plans to climb Edith Hill and then Archie Hill (11,061), the next peak north of Edith.

Dan and Peter headed for the jeep and told us they would meet us in Sawmill Cyn. John and I headed for Edith and Archie. The route up Edith is very straightforward, though it began to hail part way up. It was clear on top, so John and I grabbed a quick bite, signed the register and set our sights on Archie. For most of the hike over to Archie, it was whipping wind and on and off hail. The very rounded summit of Archie was covered in hail when I arrived a few minutes behind John. No summit register to sign, but we took some quick pics, debated whether this peak was Archie or not, and headed off. I was 100% sure that this peak was Archie. John insisted that it was the next peak north which looked higher. In the end, we climbed Archie as it is definitely the next major peak north of Edith. The peak that was possibly Archie is actually Peak 11,001, which is not listed as a NV 11k as it is not prominent enough.

After Archie, we almost completely re-ascended Edith to get back to the Jeep, dodging the summit by 50 vertical ft at the most. We then headed straight down Sawmill Cyn, with John taking a route more along the ridge while I just followed the stream. We saw two lightning hits to the south as we descended Archie and worked our way around Edith, but we were already headed down, so there was not much more we could do. We arrived at Dan's jeep soaked and tired. After some minor vehicle issues, Peter was on his way back to California, John and I were on our way to meet my friend Matt on Diamond Peak, and Dan was up for a rest day.